Heyburn, Idaho – A police officer fatally shot two dogs who escaped from their home on Saturday night. According to a press release from the Heyburn Police Department, the dogs were running loose on I-84 and they would not come to officers who tried to call for them.

The dogs, a Great Pyrenees and a Weimaraner were spotted near Exit 211 and traffic on the roadway was stopped when officers arrived at 5:57 p.m. The decision to shoot the dogs was made just 6 minutes later.

The department press release states, “Recognizing traffic was heavy for Memorial Day, and in fear for the motoring public with great potential of a rear-end collision at 80 mph, the offers made the decision to shoot the dogs.”

The dogs were not strays – their owner has turned to social media with a brief explanation about why the dogs were running loose. In the Facebook post, the owner writes:

We were out of town and our fur babies were being taken care of by relatives. We love them and they were very well taken care of. We live in the country and we have a fenced-in back yard and a large fenced-in dog run they spend every day playing in. We checked our cameras at 5 pm before we headed to dinner and Boomer (pyranese) and Luna (Weimaraner) were both still in their kennel. They reached a neighbor’s house by 5:35 pm then according to the Heyburn PD post they were called and dispatched at 5:50 pm arrived at 5:57 pm, our babies were shot and killed by 6:03pm.

The department is facing a good deal of backlash from the public about the decision to kill the dogs rather than spend more time trying to catch them. The incident remains under investigation.

Please feel free to comment about this tragic situation below.